At what stage of development did you realise that this project was going to be BIG?
[Laughs] We still haven’t realised that yet! It keeps growing bigger and bigger. We knew from the outset that it was going to be big, in all aspects, not just the budget, but the timeframe, everything. But it was like a cloud, you don’t know what is there. After a certain distance, when you enter into the cloud the end is not still here, it is still further away. So it kept on growing bigger, but because of my producers, I should say, because of the confidence they have in the project, and in me, they were willing to travel along with me.
It’s one thing to convince your investors to keep paying for this, but to get your talent - the actors particularly - on board for what? 450 shooting days? That’s a very special commitment for them to make.
Probably they had a better idea than me. Not only the actors, but the technicians also. Like the senior technician Sabu (Cyril), who was the architect of the film; my cameraman Senthil (Kumar), who has worked with me on five or six films. When I narrated the story to them they said “Okay, we are not going to work on any other films for the next two or three years”. They knew. I didn’t know, but they knew.
Same thing for the talent, particularly Prabhas. I would say, “Okay, we are doing a war movie, we’ll be doing it for about 50 days” and even then he would say “Come on, I know you are going to take longer than that!” So, he was prepared for the film to take more than two-and-a-half years. And he didn’t accept any projects, he kept himself free. More than me I think they had better clarity and more confidence in the film.
We were shown one of the sets at Ramoji Film City, and you can really feel the mythological scope of the film. Have you found your vision for the film has changed at all over this long period period?
Not really. What is driving the film are the characters themselves. They are very much etched into my mind - how they should talk, how they should behave and how I should present them on the screen. That is the driving point, even for the sets that we build and he battles that we conceive, everything is derived from the characterisations. So because we are very clear about this foundation nothing is actually changing. It is the details that we are working in more and more, but the principle structure has remained the same. It hasn’t changed, not even a tiny bit, since the day we conceived the story.
So did you know on Day 1 what you were going to be shooting on Day 200, for example?
Not in that sense. In that sense we are very off the mark. But what we want to achieve on Day 400 is the same. The only thing is we thought we’d achieve it on Day 200.
There will be a lot of visual effects in the film when it is finished, but I understand you used a lot of real extras too in the battle scenes.
Yes, at its peak I think we had about 2,000 to 2,500 people on the set. Not every day, but that’s quite a challenge, believe me! And hundreds of horses, and elephants! But believe me, humans are more difficult to control.
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